Created in 2016, this is the only podcast I have made about my own family. In 1906 my grandaunt, Mollie Dwyer, emigrated to the USA when she was 15 years of age. Her emigrant experience was very different to most. Within two months she found herself in a convent in South Dakota training to be a nun. She would never return to Castlecomer, the town she grew up in, save for the very occasional visit.

However for over 40 years she wrote to her brother Jack Dwyer (my grandfather) revealing intriguing insights into her unusual life as a nun in rural Dakota. In 2016 I rediscovered her letters where she writes about prohibition in the 1920s, World War II but also her lonely life in the Midwest of the USA as well as her struggles with depression.

These are her Letters from Dakota. My sister Ruth narrates her letters in this episode.